


Security Blanket

by shnuffeluv



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Sorry, Mycroft Feels, Mycroft-centric, Phobias, Therapy, security blankets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/pseuds/shnuffeluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little drabbles on why Mycroft carries around that umbrella, and how Sherlock mucks up his life. Mycroft feels, contains metathesiophobia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Security Blanket

For as long as Mycroft could remember, he needed something to hold on to. It didn’t matter if it was a pencil, a blanket, or when he was a baby, someone’s finger. He needed to hold something, to be able to feel something sturdy and unchanging. The world was always changing. That much Mycroft understood. But when he gripped something, he knew it wasn’t going away without his say so, and there was something innately comforting about that control.

* * *

He had a flannel blanket when he was 3, and he never let it go, not even when he was sleeping. He held onto it tightly, the only time he let go would be when he took a bath, and thus once a week his blanket was washed as Mycroft held tightly to a washcloth, the shower curtain, anything else. Something to tell him that he still had control over what he held.

As he grew, he continued to find something to hang onto, even after his parents forcibly took away his blanket. He found pencils, he found scraps of cloth, he even received a stress ball one Christmas that he squeezed into oblivion within 6 months.

* * *

Sherlock came along when he was 7. His parents were careful when Mycroft reached out to touch him, worried that he wouldn’t let go. Mycroft reached his hand out and took Sherlock’s in his own, marveling at how Sherlock could move around, and feel completely comfortable with nothing nearby to give him any sort of power. He realized, then and there, that there just might be something wrong with him, and that not everyone needed control of at least one thing in their life the second they were born.

* * *

Metathesiophobia. That’s the what the fear of change was called. Mycroft gripped the book in his hands harder than he had gripped anything before in his life. It made enough sense to him. He had always hated that everything was changing beyond his control. His grabbing things was just a symptom. He held the book as he stood up, marking the page with a single finger. He walked out to where his parents were doting over a little Sherlock, just figuring out how to flip himself over onto one side or another. He put the book down on the table and pointed to the entry that explained metathesiophobia. “I think I may have a problem,” he said quietly.

* * *

“Tell me about why you hold things, Mycroft,” the therapist said.

Mycroft shrugged. “What’s there to tell? It’s my way of having control in change. Everything is always changing so quickly. People come and go, everything is alive until it isn’t. And Sherlock…” he frowned. “Sherlock changed everything. He was the reason I changed my thinking, my parents focus more on him now than they did on me for a while, not that I mind being ignored less, exactly, but the change itself was...jarring. I hold things to have control over a little change, so the bigger ones are easier to control.”

The therapist wrote something down and looked up at Mycroft. “Mycroft, change is a natural part of life, do you understand? And you can try and stop it and fail to do so, or embrace it and use it to your advantage.”

“But…” Mycroft said quietly. “Change is...dangerous. It’s the reason people die. It’s why I get left behind. I need to know something won’t change without my say-so. I need...I need to know that I can control something.”

The therapist leaned forward. “Mycroft, you’re a young lad. You can’t control everything.”

“I know, sir,” Mycroft said, holding his own fingers in a vice. “I just need to control one thing.”

* * *

As a teenager Mycroft kept his hands in his pockets, fingers playing with the fabric that made the pockets up. Sherlock noticed and his first proper big word was metathesiophobia, which he said when he was 6. Mycroft wasn’t sure to praise his brother for being so quick, or be worried that Sherlock could see plainly what the therapists could not.

* * *

It was when Mycroft left for Uni that Sherlock gave it to him. A used but clearly tough umbrella. “Something for you to carry around and hold without you looking so out of place,” he said as a way of explanation. Mycroft was touched. He kept it with him everywhere he went, and no one looked at him twice in a climate that got as rainy as London. It was perfect.

* * *

A security blanket. That’s what this was. It was a crutch, and one that Mycroft could no longer afford in his position. He tried to get rid of the umbrella, really he did, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t even sentiment, it was that old phobia creeping up to him again. Even in control of almost everything, Mycroft needed control of the one thing he always had done.

Especially since Sherlock, the one variable he could never control, was in rehab now, and Mycroft was hoping every day that his brother didn’t off himself.

* * *

John Watson. A variable he hadn’t accounted for. Everyone had left Sherlock, they always had, yet this man came back to inspect further. Mycroft got a close up look at him, and decided quite quickly that despite the erratic tendencies this man might show, he had to trust him to ensure Sherlock was safe. His grip on his umbrella got that much tighter.

* * *

Sherlock was high, that much was obvious. Mycroft couldn’t understand for the life of him why he would be, though. Even in the face of Magnussen, it didn’t make sense. Sherlock shoved him against the wall and forced Mycroft’s grip to release. His hands shook. Sherlock knew his one weakness and had decided to use it against him. His fingers grasped for something, anything they could run over.

The release couldn’t happen too soon. John gave him a once over and decided he was fine. Mycroft took a deep breath. He couldn’t give his brother the satisfaction of reaching down to pick up his security. John thankfully realised what he was still standing there for and gave him his umbrella. Mycroft snatched it quickly, taking solace in the familiar texture of it as he left. Change was coming, and he dreaded it.

* * *

The plane couldn’t have had a tenser atmosphere if anyone tried. Moriarty was back, and Sherlock was shooting himself full of drugs. Mycroft sat in the aisle across from Sherlock, leaning against the umbrella Sherlock had given him all those years ago. He couldn’t let it go, not now. Everything was out of his control. He couldn’t take it. He needed to stop the change. He needed everything to pause, just for a minute. But he couldn’t, not when Sherlock needed help.

And Sherlock was jabbing at him, saying he wasn’t a good big brother, and he realized that he genuinely wasn’t. He wasn’t what Sherlock needed, not anymore. He turned to John Watson, that variable he had feared before but he didn’t understand why, with a new understanding. He had been replaced. A change he couldn’t bear. All he could do was ask John to look after Sherlock and pick up the remnants of the list. He almost shook with the fear of what was ahead, without the constant whirlwind that was Sherlock making him wish he never had a brother, so that he wouldn’t have to live in constant fear of what was to happen next.

Change was necessary.

But that didn’t mean that he could handle it.


End file.
